It Came with a Rabbit!
-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on July 30, 2020.
Two days after Christmas, Tim White was looking at camper prices on Ebay when the Daddy Rabbit’s Campground “For Sale” ad popped up. His wife Pam walked in the room and asked what he was doing. He joked that he was looking at a campground he was “fixin’ to buy.”
“We were not looking for a campground. I didn’t expect that answer. I thought he was kidding,” Pam said. But Tim, a former commercial repairman, actually was looking to move in a new direction. “It all fell in place like it was meant to be,” Pam continued.
They closed on the place on April Fool’s Day, just as the governor was shutting down campgrounds due to COVID-19. But they weren’t worried. “It’s a beautiful place to be. I love it here,” said Tim. Pam said she can’t wait to get back to the campground after working in Roanoke as a hairdresser.
The Whites, who grew up camping, live in Roanoke but are currently looking for a home in Floyd County. Pam, is an avid knitter and comes up the mountain regularly to shop at Michele Morris’s Woolly Jumpers yarn shop and have lunch. Neither she or Tim had heard of Daddy Rabbit’s before they bought it.
Built in 1972, the campground was owned and lovingly operated by Marion and Rick Smith for the past 35 years. The 14+ acre site includes a fish pond, a bath house, a camp store, a playground, a pavilion, a laundry facility, free Wi-Fi, 8 RV full-hook-up sites and 36 camp sites, most with water and electric. There is also a pet rabbit named Rocky at the campground. Pam, an animal lover who has 3 dogs, 2 cats and 12 chickens, said she enjoys telling friends about the campground and saying, “It came with a rabbit when we bought it!”
Ten-miles from downtown Floyd on Union School Road and five-miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway, the campground is close to the Buffalo Mountain Nature Preserve, Chateau Morrisette Winery and the FloydFest site. “We lost some business because of Floydfest being cancelled,” Tim said, adding that they were busy for July 4th and already have a lot of reservations for the Hillsville Flea Market, which takes place over Labor Day weekend. Most of the campground is booked for the first weekend in October by Sisters on the Fly, a cowgirl caravan of vintage campers from around the country.
The campground is open from April 15 to October 31 and sees lots of repeat customers. A newly upgraded website (daddyrabbitscampground.com) allows campers to reserve sites online with the help of a site map, Tim said. He reported that one current camper had just caught a good-sized fish, and a couple of campers spoke about how much they enjoyed attending the backyard Friday Night Jamboree at the Floyd Country Store.
Campers Terry and Jennifer Simmons reserved their site for the Floydfest weekend, but they were not deterred by the festival’s cancellation. On Saturday, they visited the Floyd Farmers Market, the Wildwood lily farm, went river kayaking at On the Water and bought fish at the Indigo Farms truck to cook on their camp stove, while trying to maintain social distance, Jennifer said.
The Simmons were married at Daddy Rabbits five-years-ago by local ceremonialist Kim Kessler. They come back from Winston-Salem a couple times a year to their favorite campsite. They like to visit the tree they got married under but discovered it had come down in a storm this year. The Whites had it sawed up into logs and the Simmons took one to bring home.
The Simmons started going to Floydfest at year #4 and went for 12 years in a row, always staying at Daddy Rabbit’s campground, where they love the woodland setting, the friendly camping experience and the close proximity to the county’s eclectic offerings. They’ll be back and are already looking forward to Floydfest 2021, they said. ______Colleen Redman
